codex

Colosseum Codex: Breakout Hackathon, Kompass, Solana's Surge

Breakout Hackathon, Introducing Kompass, Solana's Surge Report, Ultimate Hackathon Guide, DePIN on Solana, Solana Policy Institute

Mike Hale

04 Apr 2025 — 6 min read

🏆 Breakout Hackathon

Colosseum has announced the Solana Breakout Hackathon, which will run from April 14 to May 16, 2025.

In addition to the seven tracks, new features include the University Dropout Program, offering eligible student teams a path to build full-time with $250,000 in funding, and Best University Team Prize of a $2,500 for each track.

Each track offers prizes from $25,000 to $2,500.

Tracks and Sponsors:

🤖 AI - Replit
📲 Consumer Apps - MagicBlock
🪙 DeFi - Wormhole
🏗️ DePIN - Render Network
🛠️ Infrastructure - Walrus Protocol
🎮 Gaming - Metaplex
💵 Stablecoins - Perena

Grand Prize ($50,000): Pump.fun

In addition, up to 15 teams will be selected for Colosseum’s Accelerator, which includes $250k in pre-seed funding, mentorship, and the chance to pitch at Demo Day.

Announcing the Solana Breakout Hackathon

🧭 Introducing Kompass

Kompass is a formal verification tool developed by Runtime Verification with support from the Solana Foundation, designed to enhance the security of Solana smart contracts written in Rust.

Built on a symbolic execution engine for Rust's Mid-level Intermediate Representation (MIR), Kompass allows developers to mathematically prove the correctness of contract logic and detect bugs prior to deployment.

For Solana developers, Kompass enables more rigorous testing and verification practices, particularly valuable for applications handling high-value assets.

Initial milestones include successful execution of basic programs, support for SPL Token contracts, and public release of the codebase.

Upcoming plans include deeper integrations, property-based testing, and formal verification of critical Solana programs like SPL Token and SPL Staking.

Introducing Kompass: A Rust-native formal verification tool for Solana

🌊 Solana's Surge

This report provides an in-depth analysis of Solana's rapid resurgence, highlighting its ascent as a leading blockchain across key metrics such as DEX volume, protocol revenue, and network activity thanks to a combination of market dynamics, technical innovations, and ecosystem-wide economic shifts.

Key highlights:

DeFi Driven by Trading: Unlike Ethereum, whose DeFi growth stemmed from yield farming, Solana’s DeFi expansion has been driven by trading activity, low transaction costs, and memecoin speculation, all factors that have attracted high retail usage.
Jito’s Role in Network Efficiency: Jito has become a cornerstone of Solana’s MEV infrastructure, distributing over $1B in tips and supporting validator incentives through tools like TipRouter.
Scalability and Performance Upgrades: Infrastructure upgrades like Firedancer and DoubleZero underscore Solana’s long-term commitment to throughput, reliability, and modular client diversity.
Validator and Liquid Staking Ecosystem: A growing number of protocols are launching validator LSTs via Sanctum. JitoSOL has emerged as the most decentralized and liquid LST, deepening application-aligned validator incentives and network decentralization.
Emerging Application Sectors: DePIN projects such as Helium, Hivemapper, Render, and Roam are demonstrating real-world use cases on Solana, benefiting from its low fees and scalability to deliver wireless, compute, and data infrastructure services.

Solana is entering a new phase of growth powered by economic activity, developer tooling, next-gen infrastructure, and an ecosystem of apps optimized for real-world users.

Solana’s Surge: Pushing the Limits of Speed, Markets, and Scale (pdf)

⭐ Highlights of the Week

The Ultimate Hackathon Guide
This comprehensive guide from Superteam Hungary explains the structure of Colosseum-hosted hackathons, outlines evaluation criteria, and highlights the tools and resources available to participants, including developer kits, idea hubs, and mentorship, covering everything from how Superteam supports early-stage builders to practical strategies for ideation, team formation, development, and pitching.

DePIN on Solana
This article provides a data-driven analysis of Solana DePIN projects, examining revenue, contributor activity, and reward distribution across platforms like Helium, Render, Hivemapper, and others, highlighting both the sector’s volatility and growth potential, with insight into onchain performance trends, user engagement, and the evolving use cases enabled by Solana’s infrastructure.

Solana Policy Institute
The Solana Policy Institute (SPI) has launched as a non-partisan, non-profit organization dedicated to educating US policymakers about the role of Solana as foundational infrastructure for the digital economy. Led by CEO Miller Whitehouse-Levine and incoming President Kristin Smith, SPI aims to promote regulatory clarity and elevate the voices of builders and users across the Solana ecosystem.

⚡ Quick Hits

Why DePIN matters, and how to make it work - a16zcrypto

Solana Transaction Routing: 4 Solutions Compared - QuickNode

How to Unit Test Solana Client Code with Mirror [Video] - Mirror

How to create a token on Solana with metadata and JavaScript [Video] - Nick Frostbutter

Arcium Partners with Darklake to Advance Encrypted DeFi - Arcium

SVM vs EVM: A quick builders guide to VMs - @uttam_singhk

⚙️ Tools & Resources

Lulo Developer Dashboard allows developers to generate API keys, manage Lulo integrations, and access API documentation to incorporate Lulo’s infrastructure directly into their own apps.

Metaplex Aura Public Gateway is a permissionless UI for RPC requests and DAS queries across Solana and the SVM powered by Metaplex with free and paid plans.

💸 Funding

DeCharge, a decentralized EV charging network, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding led by Lemniscap, with participation from Colosseum, Daedalus Angels, and other investors including Shek (Superteam/Solana), Arnold Lee (Sphere), Vibhu Norby (DripHaus) to accelerate DeCharge’s expansion across the US, Europe, and emerging markets.

Jupiter has acquired DRiP Haus in an all-cash deal estimated at twice the startup’s prior funding of $11.5 million. The acquisition marks Jupiter’s first expansion into NFTs and supports its broader goal of becoming a comprehensive “crypto superapp.”

BONK has acquired Exchange Art, a digital art marketplace, as part of a strategic effort to expand its ecosystem and support the NFT creator economy. BONK plans to leverage its resources to enhance platform features, expand reach, and foster new integrations between digital art and tokenized communities.

👩‍🔧 Get Hired

Solana Foundation is hiring a Technical Writer to manage knowledge bases and write documentation.
Ironforge is hiring a Rust Developer to develop software and infrastructure tools.
LI.FI is hiring an Ecosystem Manager (Solana) to expanding their presence and brand awareness within the Solana ecosystem.
Socket is hiring a Senior Protocol Engineer - Solana to lead Socket and Bungee's expansion into Solana.

📅 Event Calendar

Development in Solana Driven by IA: DevAI Workshop Code, Buenos Aires, Apr 9
SOLxAR will host a technical workshop for experienced developers to unveil the beta launch of Codigo’s DevAI platform. The event will include a presentation and hands-on session demonstrating how DevAI streamlines smart contract development.

Accelerate 2025 Events
BlastCtrl has released an updated and expanded calendar of side events at Solana Accelerate NYC in May.

BAXUS Solana Americana - Superteam Kentucky Kickoff, Louisville, KY, May 1
BAXUS, Narwhal Ventures, and The LongTail Buildinare hosting the Solana community in Louisville for Kentucky Derby week as they help launch the latest Superteam location in Kentucky, officially titled the Touch Bluegrass Dao.

🎧 Listen to This

Colosseum

In this episode of the Colosseum Podcast, host Chase Barker welcomes Proph3t, founder of MetaDAO.

The conversation dives into the unique concept of Futarchy and how MetaDAO aims to replace traditional governance token voting with decision markets, the new Launchpad platform and its first project with mtnDAO, his experiences as a first-time founder, the challenges of gaining investor attention, and the importance of building a supportive community around innovative ideas.

Proph3t shares his journey as a first-time founder, transitioning from engineering to leading MetaDAO, securing backing from Paradigm and Colosseum, and how hiring was also a learning curve.

For new founders, Proph3t emphasizes the importance of finding the right co-founder and spending significant time on hiring early and engaging with the Solana developer community and prominent founders.

The Colosseum Podcast: Proph3t of MetaDAO

Bonus Episodes

Crypto Trailblazers: Jon Wong, Solana Foundation - theCUBE

Jon Wong, Head of Ecosystem Engineering at the Solana Foundation, discusses Solana's core design choices, ecosystem evolution, and explains how these technical strengths support emerging use cases, particularly around stablecoins and banking integration, and the importance of fostering real-world adoption through developer tools, user stories, and collaborative financial infrastructure.

Meditations with Seg w/ Zano Sherwani of Jito Labs - Midcurve

In this episode, Zano Sherwani co-founder and CTO of Jito Labs as well as co-founder of The Port in Miami, explores Miami's evolution as a crypto hub, The Port's growth to 30 members, and Jito's vision for the future of Solana. Zano also touches on the importance of wellness in life and how practices like breathwork help maintain peak performance while building.

Parcl Transforms Real Estate Exposure With Gus - Solana Weekly

Gus Marquez from Parcl explains how the platform offers on-chain exposure to real estate markets without tokenizing physical assets, Parcl’s use of proprietary data, synthetic indexes, Solana’s infrastructure to enable long/short positions on real estate trends, and Parcl’s goal to simplify real estate investing and bring greater liquidity to the sector.

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